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Disclaimer

The opinions in my posts are mine alone. They do not represent those of my employers (past or present), family members, friends or enemies.
I think that's pretty clear.

Who am I?

I’m Graham Oakes. An oracle dba with a few years experience. I’m currently employed by a large financial organisation and I’m based in the City of London. I’ve worked mostly in England but I’ve also spent time around Europe and the States.

I originally studied geology and first came across oracle whilst working at Esso, providing technical support for the geologists and geophysicists. Esso agreed to fund some further studying in IT and I then made the full switch to IT when my previous manager at Esso moved to Getty Images and came knocking.

I worked for 4 years at Getty Images in Camden, met some great people and generally had a fun time. Towards the end of my time at Getty I spent a year living in Bratislava, Slovakia and commuting over the border each day to the office in Vienna, Austria. Needless to say I gathered an awful lot of stamps in my passport.

Since then I’ve worked in a number of places and now find myself at my current place of work. It’s the busiest and largest (~4000 instances) environment I’ve ever worked in, so it certainly keeps me on my toes. About a year ago I took a slightly different role as the team lead for the group of dbas I work with. I now spend around 50% of my time managing as opposed to technical work. My team contains some superb dbas, both oracle and sybase.

I’m also an absolute sports fanatic. Football, cricket, rugby, ice hockey, american football, basketball etc. You name it, I’ll watch it! For my sins I’m a West Ham United fan, another painful season beckons…